Turkey’s coronavirus death toll rises by 125 to 1,643

Duvar English

Turkey’s death toll from the coronavirus rose by 125 to total 1,643 and new confirmed cases rose by 4,801 to bring the country’s total to 74,193, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on April 16.

A total of 7,089 people have recovered so far, and the number of tests carried out over the past 24 hours came to 40,427, the minister said. 

"We have exceeded the daily target of 40,000 tests. The increase in the number of cases stayed at a predictable level. The progress regarding the patients requiring intensive care is under control. The number of our newly recovered patients is above 1,000," Koca wrote on Twitter.

Turkey is currently treating 1,854 patients in intensive care units, according official figures.

Turkey confirmed its first coronavirus case early on March 11. Since then, the government has taken a series of precautions to curb the spread of the virus.

On April 13, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Turkey will impose a fresh lockdown this weekend, after a 48-hour curfew in major 31 cities that ended at midnight on April 12.

“We have decided to continue to implement weekend curfews in the upcoming period, as needed. I would like to announce to our citizens hereby that a curfew will be implemented starting on April 17 night and ending on April 19 night,” Erdoğan said.

Turkey’s supermarket chains made a request to the Interior Ministry to be held exempt from the weekend-long curfew of April 18 and 19 on the grounds that the previous 48-hour curfew had hurt business, daily Sözcü reported April 16.

Turkey’s Food Wholesalers Association Chair Galip Aykaç said that stores also lost perishable supplies during the weekend-long curfew.

“We made an application to continue the supply chain in order to be able to provide goods for the increase in demand that will follow the curfew,” Aykaç said.